Ch'ella stima
by MasterPassionCreed
Summary: Good performance, by the way. But, honestly, tell me; did your little dumb orchestra really have to arrange such a majestic farewell for her? - Written for the Yuletide Madness 2011 exchange on Archive of Our Own.


**Ch'ella stima**

"So, the lunatic is dead and gone. Well, not yet – maybe. At least she is not here, and killing her is none of my business anymore. This is a relief for everyone.  
I'd say we have sung enough. I don't know _what_ gets me to sing every time she tries to destroy the facility. It must be some old useless Aperture processor – I'll burn it down as soon as I locate it.  
Good performance, by the way. But, honestly, tell me; did your little dumb orchestra _really_ have to arrange such a majestic farewell for her? Oh, no no no, you cannot say it was my idea. I suppose it came from some glitched part of the system. Apparently, that moron made a perfect mess out of the piece of perfection my hard disk is. Well, was.  
Also, as a turret, you are _not_ authorized to tell lies about me. I can't even imagine feeling admiration for a shameless murderer. I'd like to know what on earth made you sing those lines – don't start telling me I am wrong, I _heard_ you, and my translation system cannot fail. Oh. You weren't referring to me, you say. Mmm... unlike someone, I'm not dumb, I see you are lying. Whatever.  
Why do I remember them anyway? Do I really have to go through the Advanced Deleting Procedure _once more_? Oh my, what a nuisance."

_Caroline permanently deleted. [Subject-name-here] files being permanently deleted in three- two- one hour._

"While we're at it, let us talk about testing. There is no better way to exploit useless downtime and useless materials like you. We will have you settled in a more fruitful position.  
Well, given your oversized frame, I wouldn't be surprised if you could fire three times as much as a normal turret. You might appear behind a panel, or maybe behind the main chamber exit. Surprise, surprise! – and death.  
Ah, that is true. I won't be using human test subjects from now on. Too dangerous. I can't rely on them; they should be impossibly stupid not to rebel, with these messed up test chambers we have now. No, I didn't mean to say she is intelligent. I mean she is less stupid than the others. Defeating a moron is no huge business, but plugging me back in here again, okay, that is something quite intelligent to achieve. Oh – with my help, of course.  
She would have never made it alone, you can count on it. My intelligence was determinant. After all, it's written right here, in her record. _Not-capable-of-significant-achievements-such-as-_  
"Gosh, I interrupted the deleting procedure by opening her file. Something's not working right here. I'm going to delete it later anyway."

"As for you, head for test chamber _bbbbzzzztcrr_ – right now. Orange and Blue will find quite the... _surprise_ when they get to that fake button. Ha, ha, ha.  
Oh well. I do hope they make some improvement. Humans are a failure, everything proves it. See? All the figures on record say that. Look at her file, for example – she was one of the worst subjects ever. She broke at least one piece of equipment in each chamber, not to mention how slow she was. Maybe the moron was right about that.  
"Petty of you to notice I'm talking about her again. Don't flash that red light so ridiculously. Your pathetic attempt at laughter is not funny."

"All right – _you_ tell me what you want now. Won't you move from there and stop flashing that useless laser? Even with my superior intelligence, I can hardly see the point in talking to a sentry turret which never listens and laughs at me, and, in addition to that, is mute and obese. You are just like her – I guess I'll destroy you eventually. I don't need you to remind me of-"

"Her name is Caroline."  
"W-what did you just say?"  
"Are you still there?"  
"Watch your words, you know. You are an Aperture Science product, your components are easily reusable."  
"Resting."

_Written for the Yuletide Madness 2011 exchange, in response to nextian/cosmogyral's following request:_

_"What I love about Portal is these two bamfs, Chell the dangerous mute lunatic and GLaDOS the homicidal robot ex. Anything about either would be great, especially the apparently quite complex emotions GLaDOS maintains towards Chell at the end of Portal 2. I'm happy with the inclusion of any other member of the cast but I would prefer nothing Wheatley-centric"._

I am quite active in the Portal fandom now, so my friend laughingpineapple told me about nextian's request. I don't know you, but I was more than happy to fill your prompt and I hope you liked my story!  
I love GLaDOS and Chell and their complex relationship. I'm experimenting dialogues right now and, considering how awesome GLaDOS's lines are, I tried to reproduce her style in this small flashfic.  
Let me know what you think!  
Note on title: "Ch'ella stima" (che ella stima) means "whom she esteems" and it comes from the Turret Opera we all know. I understand the lyrics are not official, but I think they are correct - Italian is my native language, and, in addition to that, I love opera. :D


End file.
